


When Soft Voices Die

by mosolytobb



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 02:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18562219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosolytobb/pseuds/mosolytobb
Summary: From the opposite end of a static-ridden telephone line, he delivered the news I had been on standby to hear; that Elio’s flame, too bright for its own good, had finally burned out.





	When Soft Voices Die

**Author's Note:**

> Update 6/8/19: I've changed this to be a standalone fic. Whilst I did have plans to tell the story leading up to this, despite my best efforts, I just couldn't find the groove. Hope you enjoy it as it is (not sure enjoy is the right word but... you know), and thanks for all the comments and kudos!

 

**October, 1990**

 

_It’s over._

That’s what Samuel Perlman said to me the morning Elio died.

From the opposite end of a static-ridden telephone line, he delivered the news I had been on standby to hear; that Elio’s flame, too bright for its own good, had finally burned out.

_It’s over, Oliver._

_We can all rest now._

**~**

His funeral was simple. A short service at the crematorium in S. with only a small number of attendees. No songs, no lengthy eulogy, no fuss. Only the reading of a short poem by his father who’s words came out slow and thick, bursting with pride and broken with grief.

Although the Perlman’s had not chosen a religious ceremony, I was thankful that they kept to the Jewish tradition of a closed casket. Seeing his body like that would have been too much to bear. It was hard enough to _watch_ him die. Day after day, week after week, as an inexorable ennui consumed him like poison ivy; each day collecting more and more of what it thought it was owed.

Vapid condolences were handed out quietly to those who deserved their comfort most. Samuel, Annella, his family. Who was I but a friend? I was not asked to carry his casket, nor did I expect to. I understood why. His father, followed by uncles and cousins I naturally did not recognise, took the load I would not have been able to take even if I had tried.

Annella’s weeps were unmistakable. Her usual elegant composure shattered like her heart surely was. I watched as she clutched a handkerchief to her chest at the sight of her only child’s concealed remains. Seeing her sob uncontrollably in Samuel’s arms sent my blood cold. This was the reality of Elio’s unjust and untimely death. It was sorrow, pain, guilt and regret. It was the length of his stolen lifetime. It was a mother who no longer feels like a mother; her little boy frozen in a sleeping charade she could never wake him from. It was enduring heartache and an abiding, cruel, cloud that lingered over him and the disease that took him.

But he was more than his disease. He was more than what the world thought of him at the end, and I resented every shameful sanction upon his soul more than I had resented a thing in this life or beyond it.

I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. For _all_ of us. I wanted to shatter the windows with my indignation, claw Elio’s body out of his casket and tell him it didn’t have to be this way. I wanted to beg him to take just one more breath, because with just one more breath maybe we could find a way to do things differently this time. Maybe I could find a way to save him, and everyone he loved, from the misery of his needless death.

But it was too late. His flame was snuffed; his petals wilted; his soulful voice dead in the cool October wind that kicked up the leaves and left dirt behind in their place.

Samuel was right. It was over.

**~**

Mafalda had prepared food back at the villa for everyone who wished to join them in celebrating Elio’s life, but I could not bring myself to go. How much was there to celebrate? Twenty-four years was not enough. I could not celebrate Elio’s _lack_ of life. I could not celebrate how little he got to live whilst the rest of us continued on. And whilst I understood that for many it was an important part of grief - to convince oneself that there is joy in simply living at all - the thought of seeing that villa without him in it was unbearable; a kind of pain so acutely sharp that just imagining it was enough to send me into collapse.

I declined as politely as I could manage.

“I understand,” Samuel said softly, as if reading my face like a note. I was in awe of his strength. “We must all find our way. For me, I find comfort in the places I can picture him. His absence is proof, and therefore a reminder, that he was once there at all.”

I walked back to my hotel alone, down the long roads I knew well one summer many years ago. The trees were greener then, the ground charred, my whole body aching from pushing my bicycle too hard up the incline into B. Now, only one small part of me ached as I collapsed into my hotel room drunk on dolour. I found Billowy in my suitcase, held it to my chest and sobbed so hard I vomited over and over until my stomach hurt, my throat burned raw and I eventually passed into fitful and taunting dreams of Elio - barefoot, boyish and beautiful.

**~**

The sun rose pink over the Ligurian that next morning - filling the frame of my window brighter than I had ever seen it before. The romantic in me wanted to believe it was Elio passing through somewhere, his uncontrollable light drenching everything he loved. I don’t believe in any kind of life or spirit after death. I’m fairly sure Elio didn’t either. And yet, I clung to it; the beauty of a dazzling dawn after the darkest dusk. It turned out I didn’t need faith to feel him. It was just there. Waiting for me. Pushing air into my lungs when I needed it the most.

I breathed freely for the first time in days. Long, deep, rejuvenating breaths as the dawn chorus sang their daily song. Perhaps it meant that Elio was finally at peace. Perhaps it was his way of letting us know it was all going to be fine, that the world would keep on turning, the flowers would keep on blooming, the birds would keep on singing. Or perhaps, I was just learning to live in a world where Elio could now only be found in moments of abstract happiness.

Whatever it was, it gave me enough calm to sleep properly for the first time in days. 

 **~**  

Before I left Italy I gathered the courage to call Samuel one more time. His voice was airy and strange, but not lacking in the warmth I had grown to expect. I asked him carefully about Elio’s ashes.

“We plan to scatter him in all the places he loved."

“He had a spot," I said, "A secret spot that we --”

“If it is secret, Oliver, then you must not tell me.” His voice was jovial but serious, and I could hear the sound of Elio laughing somewhere deep in my chest. It burned, and for a moment I was afraid I might throw up again.

On the piazzetta where I agreed to meet him, Samuel gave me a small palm-sized urn of Elio’s ashes - one he informed me used to hold some of his grandfather’s - and instructed me to do as I see fit. I tucked it carefully into the inside pocket of my backpack before taking my borrowed bike and riding without pause to the berm.

There was a chill in the air when I got there, the soothing sound and fresh smell of trickling water a welcome balm for my senses. I sat down on the knoll, Elio’s ashes next to me on the grass somewhere near the spot we kissed for the very first time. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. For Elio, I suppose it was.

“This is absurd,” I mumbled, idly picking at the blades between my legs. “How did we end up here, hm?”

I shook my head, bewildered.

“I’m so mad at you, Elio. You know that, right? So fucking mad. It’s not meant to be like this. This wasn’t what the world had planned for you.”

I looked up at the sky. It wasn’t the brilliant blue I remembered from our first afternoon there, but mottled grey with clouds obscuring the sun. It would have been fitting for it to rain. I probably would have welcomed it.

“We were so happy here, you and I,” I said, softer now. “You were so beautiful, like nothing I had ever seen before. The sun just _found_ you. Did you know that? Probably not. I’ll never forget the way you looked that summer. Dazzling all the time, so open and gracious. A smart-ass with the sweetest tongue. You barely touched the ground. You walked around like you were just meant to be here. Like the world was made for you and you alone, and the rest of us were just lucky to exist alongside you.”

A deep breath, then tears.

“This is all so unfair. You deserved so much better. I know I failed you. I’m sorry Elio. I’m so fucking sorry. I was weak and I thought we had time. I was… _fuck_ , I thought we had so much more time.”

With the urn between my fingers and a sudden urgency to leave, I stood up and carefully removed the lid. In one gentle twist of my wrist I emptied the contents into my hand. My head started to spin at the thought that those fine grains were once part of Elio himself; that bright young boy so devastatingly full of life. What would he have become? What story was written for him? What life was he to lead? He was, and would forever remain, made up of infinite possibilities.

Now, he was just dust.

“I’ll see you again,” I whispered into the breeze. My own private four-word eulogy. A promise I intended to keep.

I let the ashes fall slowly from my palm. They caught the wind like blossom, dispersing in an instance. I stared into the copse; watched as the breeze rustled the leaves and tickled the tips of the long grass. It was peaceful, even on the brink of winter. It made sense that Elio loved to escape there. I pictured him all around me, from a little boy reading Dickens on the bank to that precocious teenager on the cusp of manhood who soaked my shorts with freezing water all because he wanted to kiss me.

I smiled at the memory. And then I smiled even wider, knowing that a part of him would stay there forever, soaked evermore into the earth that held so many of his memories.

My sweet Elio. Now the ghost of Monet’s berm.

 

 _Music, when soft voices die,_  
_Vibrates in the memory;_  
_Odours, when sweet violets sicken,_  
_Live within the sense they quicken._  
  
_Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,_  
_Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;_  
_And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,_ _  
_ Love itself shall slumber on.

\- Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 


End file.
